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Kavitha Rajagopalan

@kxraja.bsky.social

1.2K followers 880 following 1K posts

Founding director, Asian Media Initiative @ccmnewmarkj.bsky.social. Writer. Previously Sr Fellow Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affrs. Global migration + Asia-Pacific. Pediatric transplant mom.

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Kavitha Rajagopalan @kxraja.bsky.social · Sep 8

Thrilled to kick off this series! Community journalism has long advanced democracy in immigrant communities and is a bulwark against digital authoritarianism — but today faces escalating threats and revenue loss.

This series showcases Nepali, Indonesian, Chinese, and Filipino media. Follow along!

steve-npq.bsky.social @steve-npq.bsky.social · Sep 8

Today @npquarterly.bsky.social starts a 6-part weekly series, "The New Asian Diaspora Media: Defending Democracy Locally and Globally." First up: @kxraja.bsky.social. [Amid anti #immigrant backlash], "AAPI community journalism is more important than ever." See: nonprofitquarterly.org/how-asian-di...

How Asian Diaspora Digital Community Media Advance Democratic Practice - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly

Asian American community news media help their audiences participate in civic life, a role that has become even more important as immigrants face increased repression.

nonprofitquarterly.org

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Chantal James @chantalalive.blacksky.app · 23h

The cultures of Indigenous people here were not less advanced than Europe & neither were the African cultures slaves were taken from even though someone's going on about that in my mentions. Indigenous Americans' intentional agricultural stewardship produced a paradise as Europeans admitted.

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Uzza @uzzamodea.bsky.social · 9h

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ghost of malena @seachanger.bsky.social · 16h

@thisamericanlife.org had a similar thought & re-ran their excellent episode from 1997 about Chicago’s first Black mayor. extra compelling because many of the people contributing oral history to the episode have now passed

www.thisamericanlife.org/869/harold

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Nedal Al-Amari @nedalalamari.bsky.social · 2h

Margaret Brennan: This wasn’t a mistake; it was a deliberate target.

President Ahmad Al-Shar’a: Of course. These targets were intentional and served one purpose, to force people out of these areas.

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Kavitha Rajagopalan @kxraja.bsky.social · 2h

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Green card holder imprisoned and denied treatment.

Paramjit Singh: Sikh man with brain tumour detained by US immigration

Paramjit Singh, an Indian passport holder, has lived in the US on a green card since 1994.

www.bbc.com

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David Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 2d

ICE agents to US citizen: Turn around or you're getting the dog.

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Laura Rodríguez Presa @lauranrodriguez.bsky.social · 14h

ICE killed their father. Now they’re in foster care.

Silverio Villegas, a single father, was fatally shot by fed agents after he allegedly tried to flee a traffic stop in Franklin Park.

His family spoke to the Tribune of their grieve and their fight.

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/12/s...

Family of Chicago-area man killed by ICE seeks to reunite with his children who are now in foster care in Idaho

The state of Idaho took custody of the children a few weeks after Silverio Villegas Gonzalez was killed by ICE agents in Franklin Park on Sept. 12.

www.chicagotribune.com

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unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 16h

There are a tremendous number of ICE watchers out in Rogers Park this afternoon after some early morning abductions.

People are guarding churches and patrolling alleyways. Ran into Alderperson Hadden. First timers tell us they're primed and ready to use their whistles.

Know your rights flyer in Spanish on street pole

Alderperson Maria Hadden on street corner

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Kavitha Rajagopalan @kxraja.bsky.social · 10h

And some early 1965ers who were getting sponsored and stipends to come here.

ashley scarebanks 💀🕯️ @ziibiing.com · 10h

it is mind-boggling to try and figure out how most white americans think the immigration system works

Reposted by Kavitha Rajagopalan

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 14h

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

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A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 22h

Vought is at war with large swaths of the population, with the very idea of a society defined by democratic pluralism. If you have correctly identified that this guy is now in a really powerful position, that people like him are in control of the government, how is that not the main story?

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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 22h

Sunday reading:

I wrote about the aggrieved extremist who is currently firing thousands of federal workers and ravaging state capacity based on conspiratorial nonsense - and about mainstream media’s infuriating tendency to sanitize Russell Vought and the regime he serves.

This week’s piece:

We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly

Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy

steady.page

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Brennan Center @brennancenter.org · 21h

Trump admin uses language, tactics of war against perceived enemies. “It’s a military language used by the government against its own people at a time, in fact, of relative tranquility,” says @mawaldman.bsky.social. “That’s really damaging, and it’s really rare.”

Trump deploys tactics and language of war against perceived domestic threats

It represents a dramatic shift in the use of the military, which has been focused for most of American history on threats from abroad.

www.washingtonpost.com

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onion person @junlper.beer · 1d

we need to abolish this shit

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Kavitha Rajagopalan @kxraja.bsky.social · 22h

So much of the violence and hurt we’re seeing today arises from the existing oppression infrastructure.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 1d

This is as much a legacy of the War on Drugs than anything else. He has a controlled substance conviction separate and apart from the exonerated murder conviction.

Lynn Becker @cmgiulini.bsky.social · 1d

After spending 43 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, evidence hidden by the prosecution reversed his conviction. Rather than finally enjoying freedom, ICE abducted him for deportation

Depraved.

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

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Alan Dettlaff @alandettlaff.com · 1d

Yesterday I was told that the class I’m scheduled to teach this month, Confronting Oppression & Injustice, is no longer part of our curriculum. This is a required class yet there was no discussion, no faculty vote, just an email saying the class no longer exists. This is what it’s like in Texas now.

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Scroll @scroll.in · 1d

“I know I am not his only victim,” the letter read. “Many other children have suffered abuse at his hands and at RSS camps. It’s crucial that these children receive proper care and counselling.”

Read more: scroll.in/latest/10875...

#Kerala

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Lynn Becker @cmgiulini.bsky.social · 1d

He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him

Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam now faces deportation.

www.miamiherald.com

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Anna Gifty @itsafronomics.bsky.social · 1d

lol gentle reminder that DEI is not illegal. Supporting marginalized groups is not illegal. Anyone reneging on support is making a CHOICE to do so.

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Mai El-Sadany @maitelsadany.bsky.social · 2d

"Asked what freedom felt like, [Alaa] said: “It is overwhelming. It is also comfortable and natural, and I am immediately fitting in with them, including witnessing three family fights in two days. The usual stuff."

Don't miss this Guardian interview: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

‘I deserve to heal’: freed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah on his prison ordeal and next steps

The campaigner, who spent more than a decade in an Egyptian ‘vortex of incarceration’, wants to join his son in the UK while he reflects on the fight for freedom

www.theguardian.com

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Anna O. Law @unlawfulentries.bsky.social · 1d

Relatives showing me some books

Fre korematsu speaks up by Laura Atkins and Stan yogi, illustrated by yutaka Houlette

George Takei: They called us enemy. A graphic novel by disinter Scott Becker

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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 1d

Lots of reasons this kind of undercover work doesn’t happen in the U.S., but no good ones it shouldn’t

Adrian Polglase @adrianpolglase.com · 11d

We've been undercover in the UK's biggest police force revealing evidence of racism, misogyny and officers revelling in the use of force at Met Police's Charing Cross station. Here's my article: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Secret BBC filming exposes hidden culture of racism and misogyny inside Met Police

Panorama undercover investigation captures evidence that

www.bbc.co.uk

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Eric H Cline @digkabri.bsky.social · 2d

Look what arrived in the mail today! Hooray and congrats to Ken Feder! "Insightful, respectful, important, and a pleasure to read. It belongs on the bookshelf of every American," according to one archaeologist who blurbed the book. Get your copy today!

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Adam Keiper @adamkeiper.com · 2d

You would not fire these people—including the staff of the hugely, HUGELY important 'Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report'—if you cared at all about public health, if you wanted people to live.

And you would not let your thuggish henchmen fire people like this if you were a responsible president.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 2d

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 2d

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